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Neo-Nazis elected in the new Greek parliament
THE Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party will enter parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years, exit polls showed as ballots closed in an early election that could derail the country's reforms.
The party is calculated to win between six and eight percent of the vote on rising immigration and crime concerns, comfortably above the three-percent threshold required for to enter parliament.
The group reacted jubilantly and claimed the result would translate into more than 25 deputies in the 300-seat parliament, a stunning blow to mainstream parties.
"A new nationalist movement dawns," Golden Dawn said on its website.
"Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have dynamically joined the national cause for a great, free Greece," it said.
Once part of the country's political fringe, the Hryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) had already made headlines in 2010 by electing its leader to the Athens city council on a wave of anti-immigration tension in the capital's poorer districts.
In the two years that followed, with Greece sinking deeper into recession and over a million people out of job, Golden Dawn's strength grew further.
Now they appear to have multiplied their support tenfold.
With Greece the main entry-point for irregular migration to Europe, thousands of migrants unable to cross to other EU states due to legal constraints have created urban ghettos in Athens, Patras and other cities.
Hostility from local residents has spiked in recent months with the deterioration of an economic crisis that has brought recession and hundreds of thousands of job losses in Greece.
Migrants are also blamed for increased muggings, car thefts and break-ins.
Re: Neo-Nazis elected in the new Greek parliament
Yeah, thats true. Whenever there is economic problems, its time to blame the immigrants. Thats why I have watched the ridiculousness in both the USA (looking at you Arizona) and the UK with skepticism and nervousness. Skepticism because I think worries about immigration are deliberately stirred up to deflect from the real causes of economic trouble, and nervousness because political parties never seem to realize what the results of their fear mongery will be.
They always seem shocked when, a few years later, a bunch of Nazis get voted in. But its not a shock. The normal party will spend years saying "oh, the immigrants are ruining the country" but then they dont do anything about it - because they know its not really a big issue. However, if they convince the public, the public then sees that the politicians cant / wont seem to fix it, and vote instead for the loony party that will do the job, usually a far right nazi derivative of some kind.
Greeks actually aligning themselves with Nazi ideology is disgustingly ironic. In Greece, they celebrate "Ochi Day" ("Ochi" means "no") in honor of the day they stood up to Mussolini's ultimatum, marking Greece's entry into WWII. Both Italians and Nazis occupied the island my father is from.
/shameformypeople
link
At night, the streets leading to Omonoia Square are empty. That wasn't always the case. The area was the premier multicultural neighborhood of Athens and one of the first quarters to be gentrified. Jazz bars and Indian restaurants lined the streets, separated by the occasional rooms-by-the-hour hotel. It was a quarter full of immigrants, drug addicts and African prostitutes, but also of journalists, ambitious young artists and teenagers from private schools.
There are now three outwardly xenophobic parties in Greece. According to recent surveys, together they could garner up to 20 percent of the vote in elections on Sunday: the anti-Semitic party LAOS stands to win 4 percent; the nationalist party Independent Greeks -- a splinter group of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party -- is forecast to win 11 percent; and the right extremists of Golden Dawn could end up with between 5 and 7 percent.
My name is Xenia, the hospitable. Greece itself should really be called Xenia: Tourism, emigration and immigration are important elements of our history. But hospitality is no longer a priority in our country, a fact which the ugly presence of Golden Dawn makes clear.
A Personal Attack
Shaved heads, military uniforms, Nazi chants, Hitler greetings: How should a Greek journalist deal with such people? Should one just ignore them and leave them unmentioned? Should one denounce them and demand that they be banned? One shouldn't forget that they are violent and have perpetrated several attacks against foreigners and leftists. I thought long and hard about how to write about Golden Dawn so that my article was in no way beneficial to the party.
On April 12, the daily Kathimerini ran my story under the headline "Banality of Evil." In the piece, I carefully explained why it was impossible to carry on a dialogue with such people and why I thought the neo-Nazi party should disappear from media coverage and be banned. Five days later, an anonymous reply to my article appeared on the Golden Dawn website. It was a 2,500-word-long personal attack in which the fascists recounted my entire career, mocked my alleged foreign roots (I was born in Hamburg) and even, for no apparent reason, mentioned my 13-year-old daughter. The unnamed authors indirectly threatened me as well: "To put it in the mother tongue of foreign Xenia: 'Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat, kommt Attentat!'" In other words, watch your back.
Most Greeks believe that Golden Dawn has connections to both the police and to the country's secret service. Nevertheless, I went to the authorities to ask what I should do. I was told that I should be careful. They told me that party thugs could harass me, beat me or terrorize me over the phone. It would be better, they said, if I stopped writing about them. If I wished to react to the threats, they suggested I file a complaint against Golden Dawn's service provider. That, however, would be difficult given that the domain is based somewhere in the United States.
Like Weimar Germany
A friend told me that I should avoid wearing headphones on the street so that I can hear what is going on around me. My daughter now has nightmares about being confronted by members of Golden Dawn. Three of her classmates belong to the party. The three boys have posted pictures of party events on their Facebook pages. For their profile image, they have chosen the ancient Greek Meandros symbol, which, in the red-on-black manifestation used by Golden Dawn, resembles a swastika. The group's slogans include "Foreigners Out!" and "The Garbage Should Leave the Country!"
Yet, Chrysochoidis is the best loved PASOK politician in his Athens district, in part because of his xenophobic sentiments. His party comrade, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos, is just as popular. Loverdos has warned Greek men not to sleep with foreign prostitutes for fear of contracting HIV and thus endangering the Greek family.
High unemployment of roughly 22 percent, a lack of hope, a tendency toward violence and the search for scapegoats: Analyses in the Greek press compare today's Greece with Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic. "We didn't know," said many Germans when confronted with the truth of the Holocaust after Nazi rule came to an end. After elections on May 6, no Greeks should be able to make the same claim.
Ironic considering that Greeks are flooding out of the country looking for work themselves.
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
Whaaaat? Nooooo! That's can't be! Color me shocked that racists are being voted into power. I hope Greece realizes their mistake soon.
my read shelf:
idk lol